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Don’t Scrap Your Scraps! Project 4: Raw Edge Patchwork Pillow

I think this is my favorite scrap project so far! I came up with this pillow as I was brainstorming for small project ideas, and we also happened to be working on Addy’s big girl room.If you’ve been following along on my blog since last summer, you’ll remember the mendocino quilt that I made for Addy. You also might remember me babbling about some mendo pillows….which I promised to share and never did! Well, with the addition of this pillow I think I’m ready to share the set of 3.But not today. 😉 Today I’ll just share this one, along with a tutorial. I’ll share the others soon, and once we manage to acknowledge that our little girl is growing up and needs a full size bed, I will do a full reveal of her room!

Supplies:Neutral background fabric, 1/2 yd should be enough for a pillow. If you want to quilt the pillow front and back, allow for up to a yard.Scraps, trimmed to size. I cut all of my scraps to 3″ sq with the except of one 6″ sq piece.Pillowform – you choose the size!Basting spray or pins (I used spray)Batting (optional)Zipper (optional)

Note: My inspiration for this project came largely from Amanda Jean (Crazy Mom Quilts) and her ticker tape quilt. If you don’t already read her blog, check it out. She’s amazing!

To start, cut a piece of your neutral background to the size of the pillowform. Don’t allow for seam allowances-this ensures that your pillow looks nicely stuffed when finished:

Next draw a grid on your fabric, depending on the size of your scraps. I drew a 3″ grid, b/c my scraps were cut to 3″ square (with the except of 1 piece that I cut to 6″ sq.) It’s a bit hard to see the grid in this pic, I drew it on with light blue chalk pencil. Click to enlarge the pic:

Take your background square outside and give it a good spray with basting spray (or skip this step if you don’t want to use basting spray). Also, ignore my very dirty patio. (Ewww!) I placed 1 square down in this pic, to help you see the grid that I drew:

I like to quilt my pillows, so I layered my pillow top with a piece of batting and some backing. Pin basting works well for small pieces like this:

Now let’s sew down those scraps! I just sewed 1/4″ in from the raw edges. You can sew around each piece individually, or sew down the columns and across the rows. I chose to do the later:

Now you can finish your pillow however you’d like. I quilted the back pieces and added an exposed zipper. For a simple pillow, try an envelope style back.When your pillow is finished, toss it in the washer and dryer to fluff up the raw edges.Ta-da!

Look at those soft, fluffy edges (you can also get a better idea of how I sewed my pieces down in this pic)! Love it!

Love this pillow! My first quilt was a mendocino quilt. Probably my all time favorite fabric line. Very cool idea for the raw edge application. I like that there's just a little neutral peeking out from the back.